I don't. Ferrari had the better car last season and arguably threw away the title. With no regulation changes it should remain close between SV and MH. The Red Bulls will be able to mix it up in some races too .

westham,eggyandchips wrote:and Williams will be too,

Think Williams are heading for a disaster. They didn't pull up trees testing and have a very poor driver line up. I predict bottom 3 in the manufacturers championship for them.

Lewis beaten by a technical work around with the Virtual safety car (lucky Ferrari as per usual, they also seem to have a team of 4 this year as well (Haas) ) . F1 needs to sort this and non-overtaking tracks out. I don't care how traditional they are but Melbourne and the likes on Monaco need to go (or be drastically changed)

wolf359 wrote:Lewis beaten by a technical work around with the Virtual safety car (lucky Ferrari as per usual, they also seem to have a team of 4 this year as well (Haas) ) . F1 needs to sort this and non-overtaking tracks out. I don't care how traditional they are but Melbourne and the likes on Monaco need to go (or be drastically changed)

Have to agree but I'd say there is absolutely no chance of that happening.

To have races in any sport decided on technicalities and not actual racing is a massive joke.

I think after today's showing Bottas can kiss goodbye to a new contract with Mercedes. He should have put Vettel under so much pressure that the Ferrari was forced into another pit stop. Instead he just maintained the gap until far too late in the race. A more agressive drive would very probably have given Mercedes a 1-2 finish, more so given that MB's plan A was clearly to force Ferrari into a second stop. Bottas's conservative drive meant Vettel could conserve his tyres pretty much as he pleased.

Pretty decent race with Vettel winning and the Mercs being 2nd and third. Kimi knackered by a pit stop error. Some interesting gains in the lower places with McLaren making ground. Red Bull being unlucky/stupid.

As above Bottas is too safe, doesn't do enough and is the conservative option, Mercedes need some one to challenge Lewis, Max seems the man .

Mercedes have become complacent. They have had the best car for 4 seasons running and haven't needed to worry too much about tactics and decision making but the likes of Ferrari and Red Bull have been catching up and with the gap now closer, their superior racing brains are trumping the Mercedes. Hamilton was compromised in Australia by a time keeping error but he would have gone to China where he has an outstanding record, confident of picking up his first win of the season. It all looked good on Friday but was downhill from there and whilst I am sure Hamilton is pissed off, in the end he got away with a better result than it could have been. He would have been looking at damage limitation before the race but ended up narrowing the gap between him and Vettel in the end. This could be a very good season and I have no idea which way it will go but if Hamilton wants to get that 5th title ahead of Vettel, both Merecedes and Hamilton himself need to step up to the plate - they will not be able to coast through this season and very much have a fight on their hands.

White Goodman wrote:Hamilton this season showing how average he can be when his team aren't miles ahead of everyone else. I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't even achieve 2nd place in the championship this year.

Bit harsh on Hamilton who was still winning races with a McLaren that was on its way downhill and also in the Mercedes before it had established its superiority over the rest of the field. Even Alonso acknowledges that Hamilton is one of the few F1 drivers who has managed to win races when not in a dominant team.

For a multiple world champion he isn't particularly strong mentally to my mind. All ok when things are going well but pretty fragile when facing adversity .

I think Vettel will crush him by a big margin.

Vettel himself is more than capable of spitting the dummy out as he did in his final season at Red Bull as their dominance came to an end and he was regularly out performed by Ricciardo

I think there are a lot of similarities between Vettel and Hamilton but I will always prefer to see Hamilton win rather than Vettel